Category:Locomotive Basic
This programming language may be used to instruct a computer to perform a task.
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Locomotive BASIC is a variant of BASIC that was built into the ROM of the Amstrad CPC series of 8-bit home computers introduced in 1984. CPCs were a popular, slightly more expensive alternative to the Commodore C64/C128 and were not just suited for games but also office work because of their high resolution displays and CP/M support. They came with a built-in cassette deck (CPC 464 and 664) or 3" disk drive (CPC 6128) as storage devices and a "green screen" or color monitor which also housed the power supply. Sales were particularly strong in the UK, Germany, France, and Spain. Today, Locomotive BASIC can be used via CPC emulators such as JavaCPC—which are also perfectly legal because Amstrad has given their permission for distributing CPC ROM images with emulators.
Version 1.0 of Locomotive BASIC shipped with the CPC 464, later models shipped with Locomotive Basic v1.1 which brought some important improvements. Despite the fact that all later version call themselves v1.1, ROM headers show that e.g. the Amstrad Plus version is actually v1.40.[1]
Locomotive BASIC was comparatively advanced for its time (with e.g. software interrupts and comprehensive graphics and audio commands) and was very cleanly implemented, just like the rest of the Amstrad CPC ROM. System calls could be made with CALL via dedicated jump blocks in RAM, so they were unaffected by changes to the ROM between CPC models. This made software very compatible between the original three CPC models and mostly compatible for the later, considerably less popular "Plus" models that came out in 1990.
Locomotive BASIC served as a sort of primitive operating system for the CPC and was also used (together with AMSDOS RSX commands[2]) for disk and tape operations. As on many other 8-bit machines of the era, it was common to extend BASIC programs by READ-ing Z80 machine code from DATA statements, POKE-ing it to RAM, and then CALL-ing the code, an approach especially popular with type-in games from old CPC magazines.
References
See Also
- Locomotive BASIC at Wikipedia
- Command reference with code examples (based on the official documentation)
- Amstrad CPC emulator in JavaScript (best performance in Google Chrome, but sound only works in Firefox right now)
- List of other CPC emulators at the Amstrad CPC Wiki
Subcategories
This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total.
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- Locomotive Basic Implementations (empty)
- Locomotive Basic User (4 P)
Pages in category "Locomotive Basic"
The following 70 pages are in this category, out of 70 total.